Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXVI-LXXXIV

itself it cannot bear. Now although Christ would not be the vine unless He were man, yet He would not supply this grace to the branches unless He were also God. But because without this grace one cannot live, yet in such a way that death too lies in the power of free choice: If anyone, He says, does not abide in Me, he will be cast out like a branch; and he will wither; and they will gather him, and cast him into the fire, and he burns. The wood of the vine, then, is as much more contemptible if it does not abide in the vine as it is more glorious if it abides: indeed, as the Lord says of them through the prophet Ezekiel too, when cut off they are of no use for any purposes of farmers and are assigned to no works of craftsmen (Ezek. 15:5). One of two things befits the branch, either the vine or the fire: if it is not in the vine, it will be in the fire: so, that it may not be in the fire, let it be in the vine.

4. If you abide in Me, He says, and My words abide in you, you will ask whatever you will, and it will be done for you. For, abiding in Christ, what can they will except what befits Christ? What can they will, abiding in the Saviour, except what is not foreign to salvation? For we will one thing because we are in Christ, and we will another because we are still in this world. For from our dwelling in this world it sometimes steals upon us that we ask for that which we do not know is not expedient for us. But far be it that it should be done for us, if we abide in Christ, Who, when we ask, does nothing except what is expedient for us. Abiding, then, in Him, while His words abide in us, we shall ask whatever we will, and it will be done for us. For if we ask and it will not be done, we are not asking for what dwelling in Him holds, nor for what His words which abide in us hold; but for what the desire and weakness of the flesh holds, which is not in Him, and in which His words do not abide. For to His words certainly belongs that prayer which He taught, where we say, Our Father, Who art in heaven (Matt. 6:9). Let us not depart in our petitions from the words and meanings of this prayer, and whatever we ask will be done for us. For His words are to be said to abide in us when we do what He has commanded and love what He has promised: but when His words abide in the memory and are not found in the life, the branch is not counted as in the vine, because it does not draw life from the root. To this difference applies what is written, And to those who retain His commandments in memory, that they may do them (Ps. 102:18). For many retain them in memory in order to despise them, or even to mock and attack them. In these the words of Christ do not abide, who touch them in a certain way but do not cleave to them: and therefore they will be to them not for a benefit but for a testimony. And because they are in them in such a way as not to abide in them, they are held by them to this end, that they may be judged by them.

Tractate 82. On what the Lord says, In this is My Father made glorious, that you bear very much fruit; up to the words, And I abide in His love. Chap. 15, vv. 8-10.

1. The Saviour, commending more and more to His disciples by His speaking the grace by which we are saved, says: In this is My Father made glorious, that you bear very much fruit, and become My disciples. Whether glorified or made glorious

is said, both have been translated from one Greek word, namely doxazein. For what is called doxa in Greek is gloria in Latin. I thought this worth mentioning because the Apostle says, If Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God (Rom. 4:2). This is the glory before God by which not man but God is glorified, if a man is justified not by works but by faith, so that even his doing well comes to him from God: since the branch, as I have already said above, cannot bear fruit of itself (Tract. 81, n. 2). For if God the Father has been glorified in this, that we bear much fruit and become disciples of Christ, let us not ascribe this to our own glory, as though we had it from ourselves. For this grace is His, and therefore in this the glory is not ours but His. Hence also elsewhere, when He had said, So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, lest they should think their good works came from themselves, He at once added, And may glorify your Father Who is in heaven (Matt. 5:16). For in this is the Father glorified, that we bear much fruit and become disciples of Christ. By whom are we made so, if not by Him Whose mercy goes before us? For we are His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus in good works (Eph. 2:10).

2. As the Father has loved Me, He says, I also have loved you: abide in My love. See whence we have good works. For whence would we have them, unless because faith works through love (Gal. 5:6)? And whence would we love, unless we were first loved? This same evangelist said it most plainly in his Epistle: Let us love God, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). But when He says, As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you, He does not show an equality of nature between ours and His, such as there is between the Father and Himself, but the grace by which the man Christ Jesus is mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5). For He is shown to be mediator when He says, the Father Me, and I you. For the Father certainly loves us too, but in Him; since in this is the Father glorified, that we bear fruit in the vine, that is, in the Son, and become His disciples.

3. Abide, He says, in My love. How shall we abide? Hear what follows: If you keep My commandments, He says, you will abide in My love. Does love cause the commandments to be kept, or do the commandments kept cause love? But who would doubt that love comes first? For he who does not love has no source from which to keep the commandments. So when He says, If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, He shows not whence love is begotten, but whence it is shown. As if He were saying, Do not suppose that you abide in My love if you do not keep My commandments: for if you keep them, you will abide. That is, from this it will be evident that you will abide in My love, if you keep My commandments. So that no one may deceive himself by saying that he loves Him, if he does not keep His commandments. For we love Him to the extent that we keep His commandments; but to the extent that we keep them less, we love less. Although when He says, Abide in My love, it is not apparent which

love He spoke of, whether that with which we love Him, or that with which He Himself loves us; but it is discerned from the word above. For He had said, And I have loved you; to which word He immediately added, Abide in My love: therefore it is that with which He loved us. What, then, is Abide in My love, except, abide in My grace? And what is If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, except, by this you will know that you will abide in My love, with which I love you, if you keep My commandments? Therefore it is not that we first keep His commandments so that He may love us; but unless He loves us, we cannot keep His commandments. This is the grace which lies open to the humble and is hidden from the proud.

4. But what is that which He adds: Just as I too have kept the commandments of My Father, and abide in His love? Certainly here too He wished to be understood that love of the Father with which the Father loves Him. For thus He had said, As the Father has loved Me, I too have loved you; and to these words He added those, Abide in My love, without doubt that with which I have loved you. Therefore what He says also of the Father, I abide in His love, is to be taken, namely, as that with which the Father loved Him. But is grace to be understood here too, that with which the Father loves the Son, just as it is grace with which the Son loves us, since we are sons by grace, not by nature, whereas the Only-begotten is so by nature, not by grace? Or is this, in the Son Himself too, to be referred to the man? So indeed. For in saying, As the Father has loved Me, I too have loved you, He shows the grace of the mediator. But the Mediator of God and men is Christ Jesus, not inasmuch as He is God, but inasmuch as He is man. And assuredly, according to that which He is as man, it is read of Him, And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age, and in grace with God and men (Luke 2:52). According to this, then, we can rightly say that, although human nature does not belong to the nature of God, yet human nature belongs by grace to the person of the only-begotten Son of God; and by so great a grace that none is greater, none at all equal. For no merits preceded that taking up of the man, but from that taking up all His merits began. The Son therefore abides in the love with which the Father loved Him, and for that reason He kept His commandments. For what is that man too, except that God is His upholder (Ps. 3:4)? For the Word was God, the Only-begotten coeternal with the One begetting; but so that a mediator might be given to us, by ineffable grace the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14).

Tractate 83. On these words, These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be fulfilled. This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Chapter 15, verses 11, 12.

1. You have heard, dearly beloved, the Lord saying to His disciples, These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be fulfilled. What is the joy of Christ in us, except that He deigns to rejoice over us? And what is our joy which He says is to be fulfilled, except to have fellowship with Him? On account of which He had said to blessed Peter, If I do not wash you, you will have no part with Me (John 13:8). His joy therefore in

to us, is the grace which He has bestowed on us: it is also our joy. But in this He was rejoicing even from eternity, when He chose us before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Nor can we rightly say that His joy was not full: for God never at any time rejoiced imperfectly. But that joy of His was not in us: because neither did we yet exist, in whom it could be; nor, when we began to exist, did we begin to exist with Him. But in Him it always was, Who rejoiced, with the most certain truth of His foreknowledge, in us as those who would be His. Accordingly He already had perfect joy concerning us, when He rejoiced in foreknowing and predestining us: for no fear could be in that joy of His, lest perhaps what He foreknew He would do should not come to pass. But neither, when He began to do what He had foreknown He would do, did His joy, by which He is blessed, increase; otherwise He would have become more blessed because He made us. Far be this, brethren: the blessedness of God, since it was not less without us, does not become greater from us. His joy, therefore, concerning our salvation, which was always in Him when He foreknew and predestined us, began to be in us when He called us; and this joy we rightly call ours, by which we too shall be blessed: but this joy of ours grows and advances, and by persevering presses on towards its perfection. Therefore it is begun in the faith of those who are reborn, it will be fulfilled in the reward of those who rise again. See, it is from this, I think, that it was said, These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be fulfilled: may Mine be in you; may yours be fulfilled. For Mine was always full, even before you were called, when you were foreknown by Me as those who were to be called; but it comes to be in you also, when you are made that which I foreknew concerning you. And may yours be fulfilled: because you will be blessed, which you are not yet; just as you were created, who did not exist.

2. This is, He says, My precept, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Whether it be called a precept or a commandment, both are translated from one Greek word, which is entolē. Now He had also spoken this saying before, and you ought to remember that I discussed it with you, as far as I was able (above, Tractate 65). For there He says thus, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another (John 13:34). The repetition of this commandment, therefore, is a commending of it: except that there He says, A new commandment I give to you; but here He says, This is My commandment: there, as though there had been no such commandment before; here, as though there were no other commandment of His. But there it is called new, lest we persist in our oldness: here it is called Mine, lest we think it something to be despised.

3. But as for His saying here, This is My commandment, as though there were no other, what do we think, my brethren? Is the only commandment of His the one concerning this love by which we love one another? Is there not also another, greater one, that we love God? Or did God really give us commandment concerning love alone, so that we need not seek the others? Certainly the Apostle commends three things, saying: Now there remain faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity (1 Cor. 13:13). And though in charity, that is, in love, those two precepts are contained; yet it is said to be the greatest,