Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXXXV-CII

3. And see, dearly beloved, how He does not choose the good, but makes good those whom He has chosen. I, He says, have chosen you, and have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. Is this not the fruit of which He had already said, Without Me you can do nothing (John 15:5)? He chose, therefore, and appointed, that we should go and bear fruit: so we had no fruit on account of which He should choose us. That you should go, He says, and bear fruit. We go that we may bear it, and He Himself is the way by which we go, in which He has appointed us that we should go. Accordingly in all things His mercy goes before us. And that your fruit, He says, should remain: so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you. Let love remain, then; for it is itself our fruit. This love is now in desire, not yet in fullness: and by that very desire, whatever we ask in the name of the only-begotten Son, the Father gives us. But what it is not expedient for us, who are to be saved, to receive, let us not suppose that we ask in the name of the Saviour: rather, we ask in the name of the Saviour that which pertains to the reckoning of salvation.

Tractate 87. On what Jesus says, These things I command you, that you love one another; up to this, But I have chosen you out of the world; therefore the world hates you. Chap. 15, vv. 17-19.

1. In the Gospel reading which precedes this one, the Lord had said: You have not chosen Me; but I have chosen you, and have appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain: so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you. You remember that we have already discoursed on these words, as the Lord granted. Here, however, He says, namely in the following reading, which you heard just now when it was read out: These things I command you, that you love one another. And by this we ought to understand that this is our fruit, of which He says, I have chosen you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. And as to what He added, So that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you: He will certainly give to us then, if we love one another; since He has Himself given us this very thing too, He Who chose us when we had no fruit, because we had not chosen Him; and He appointed us that we should bear fruit, that is, that we should love one another: a fruit which we cannot have without Him, just as branches can do nothing without the vine. Charity, then, is our fruit, which the Apostle defines as from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned (1 Tim. 1:5). By it we love one another, by it we love God. For we would not love one another with true love unless we loved God. For each one loves his neighbour as himself if he loves God: for if he does not love God, he does not love himself. For on these two commandments of charity the whole Law hangs, and the Prophets (Matt. 22:40): this is our fruit. Therefore, giving us a command concerning fruit, He says, These things I command you, that you love one another. Hence the apostle Paul too, when he wished to commend the fruit of the spirit as against the works of the flesh, put this at the head: The fruit, he says, of the spirit is charity: and then he wove together the rest as sprung from that head and bound to it, which are joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence (Gal. 5:22). But who rejoices well who does not love the good from which he rejoices? Who can have true peace, unless with that one

whom he truly loves? Who is long-suffering in remaining perseveringly in good, unless he is fervent in loving? Who is kind, unless he loves the one whom he helps? Who is good, unless he is made so by loving? Who is faithful to his salvation, unless by that faith which works through love? Who is meek to good purpose, if love does not govern him? Who restrains himself from that by which he is defiled, unless he loves that by which he is made honourable? Rightly, therefore, does the good Master so often commend love, as though it alone were to be commanded, without which the other good things cannot profit, and which cannot be had without the other good things by which a man is made good.

2. But for the sake of this love we ought also patiently to endure the hatreds of the world. For it must needs hate us, whom it sees unwilling to have what it loves. But the Lord consoles us greatly from His own case, Who, when He had said, These things I command you, that you love one another, added, and said, If the world hates you, know that it held Me in hatred before you. Why then does a member exalt itself above the head? You refuse to be in the body if you are not willing to endure the hatred of the world together with the head. If you were of the world, He says, the world would love what was its own. He says this, surely, to the whole Church, which itself too He often calls by the name of the world: as is that saying, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). And likewise that one: The Son of Man did not come to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through Him (John 3:16). And John says in his Epistle: We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and He is the propitiation for our sins; not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world (1 John 2:1–2). The whole world, therefore, is the Church, and the whole world hates the Church. The world, then, hates the world: the hostile hates the reconciled, the condemned the saved, the defiled the cleansed.

3. But this world which God reconciles to Himself in Christ, and which is saved through Christ, and to which every sin is forgiven through Christ, has been chosen out of the world that is hostile, condemned, defiled. For out of that mass which perished wholly in Adam are made the vessels of mercy, in which is the world that belongs to reconciliation: which the world hates that belongs, out of the same mass, to the vessels of wrath, which are made ready for perdition (Rom. 9:21–23). Then, when He had said, If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own, He at once added, But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. So they too were from there, and in order that they might not be [of it], they were chosen from there; not by their own merits, since no good works of theirs had gone before; not by nature, which had been wholly vitiated at its very root through free will: but by grace freely given, that is, true grace. For He Who chose a world out of the world made what He would choose; He did not find it: for a remnant has been saved through the election of grace. But if by grace, he says, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom. 11:5–6).

4. But if it is asked how the world of perdition, which hates the world of redemption, loves itself: it loves itself, certainly, with a false love, not a true one. Accordingly it loves itself falsely,

and hates itself truly. For he who loves iniquity hates his own soul (Ps. 10:6). But he is said to love himself because he loves the iniquity by which he is iniquitous; and again he is said to hate himself because he loves that which harms him. So he hates the nature in himself and loves the vice: he hates what he was made through the goodness of God, and loves what was done in him through free will. Hence we too, if we understand rightly, are both forbidden and commanded to love him: forbidden, namely, where it is said to us, Do not love the world (1 John 2:15); but commanded, where it is said to us, Love your enemies (Luke 6:27). They are the world that hates us. Therefore we are both forbidden to love in him what he himself loves in himself, and commanded to love in him what he himself hates in himself, namely God's workmanship and the various consolations of His goodness. For we are forbidden to love the vice in him, and commanded to love the nature, while he himself loves the vice in himself and hates the nature: so that we may both love and hate him rightly, while he loves and hates himself perversely.

Tractate 88. On what Jesus says, Remember My word, etc., as far as this, But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him Who sent Me. Chapter 15, verses 20, 21.

1. The Lord, exhorting His servants to bear the hatreds of the world patiently, sets before them no greater and better example than Himself: since, as the apostle Peter says, Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His footsteps (1 Pet. 2:21). And this, if we do it, we certainly do with His help, Who said, Without Me you can do nothing. Then, to those to whom He had already said, If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before you: now too, in what you heard when the Gospel was being read, He says, Remember My word which I spoke to you, The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you also; if they have kept My word, they will keep yours also. But in saying, The servant is not greater than his lord, does He not plainly show how we ought to understand what He had said above, Now I do not call you servants (John 15:5; 18:15)? For see, He calls them servants. For what else is, The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you also? It is clear, therefore, that that servant who does not abide in the house for ever (ibid. 8:35), that one belonging to the fear which charity casts out (1 John 4:18), is to be understood where it was said, Now I do not call you servants; but here, where it is said, The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you also, that servant is signified who belongs to the chaste fear which endures for ever and ever (Ps. 18:10). For this servant is going to hear, Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of your Lord (Matt. 25:21).

2. But all these things, He says, they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him Who sent Me. What all things will they do, if not those He spoke of, namely, they will hold you in hatred, and persecute you,

and despise their word? For if they did not keep their word, and yet did not hate them, and did not persecute them; or even if they hated them, and yet did not persecute them: they would not be doing all things. But "All these things they will do to you on account of My name": what else is this to say than, they will hold Me in hatred in you, they will persecute Me in you, and your word, because it is Mine, will for that reason not keep? For "All these things they will do to you on account of My name": not yours, but Mine. So much the more wretched, then, are those who do these things on account of this name, as those are more blessed who suffer these things on account of this name: as He Himself says in another place, "Blessed are those who suffer persecution on account of righteousness" (Matt. 5:10). For this is "on account of Me", or "on account of My name": because, as the Apostle teaches, "He was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, as it is written, Whoever glories, let him glory in the Lord" (1 Cor. 1:30–31). For indeed the wicked do these things to the wicked; but not on account of righteousness: and therefore both are wretched, both those who do and those who suffer. The good also do them to the wicked: where, although these do it on account of righteousness, yet those do not suffer on account of righteousness.

3. But someone says: If, when the wicked persecute the good on account of the name of Christ, the good suffer on account of righteousness, then surely the wicked do these things to them on account of righteousness; and if that is so, then also when the good persecute the wicked on account of righteousness, the wicked too suffer on account of righteousness. For if the wicked can inflict persecution on the good on account of the name of Christ, why can the wicked not suffer persecution from the good on account of the name of Christ; and what is this, except on account of righteousness? For if it is not on account of that for which the good act that the wicked suffer, since the good act on account of righteousness, the wicked suffer on account of unrighteousness: then neither can the wicked act on account of that for which the good suffer, since the wicked act on account of unrighteousness, the good suffer on account of righteousness. How then will it be true, "All these things they will do to you on account of My name", when they do not do it on account of the name of Christ, that is, not on account of righteousness, but on account of their own iniquity? This question is solved thus, if we understand the saying, "All these things they will do to you on account of My name", in such a way that the whole is referred to the righteous; as though it had been said, "All these things you will suffer from them on account of My name": so that "they will do to you" is the same as "you will suffer from them". But if "on account of My name" is taken thus, as though He were saying, "on account of My name which they hate in you", it can also be taken as "and on account of the righteousness which they hate in you": and by this the good, when they inflict persecution on the wicked, can rightly be said to act both on account of righteousness, by loving which they persecute the wicked, and on account of iniquity, which they hate in the wicked themselves: so then the wicked themselves too can be said to suffer both on account of the iniquity which is punished in them, and on account of the righteousness which is exercised in their punishment.

4. Likewise it can be asked whether the wicked also inflict persecution on the wicked; as impious kings and judges, when