Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXXXV-CII

where is His promise when He says, Behold, I am with you even to the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20); and, We shall come to him, I and the Father, and shall make our abode with him (John 14:23): since He also promised that He would send the Holy Spirit in such a way that He would be with them for ever? And therefore, since from being carnal or natural men they were to become spiritual, they would assuredly have held the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit more capaciously. But in no one is the Father to be believed to be without the Son and the Holy Spirit, or the Father and the Son without the Holy Spirit, or the Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son, or the Father and the Holy Spirit without the Son: but where any one of them is, there is the Trinity, the one God. Yet the Trinity had to be made known in such a way that, although there was no diversity of substances, the distinction of persons should nevertheless be commended one by one; wherein, to those who understand rightly, a separation of natures can never appear.

6. But what follows, And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgement: of sin indeed, because they do not believe in Me; of justice, however, because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see Me; of judgement, moreover, because the prince of this world has been judged (John 16:8–11): as if the only sin were not to believe in Christ, and as if justice itself were not to see Christ, and as if judgement itself were that the prince of this world, that is, the devil, has been judged: this is very obscure, and is not to be compressed into this discourse, lest it become more obscure through brevity; but rather to be explained in another, so far as the Lord shall have helped.

Tractate 95. On these words of the preceding reading, When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of justice, etc. Chapter 16, verses 8-11.

1. The Lord, promising that He would send the Holy Spirit, says, When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgement. What is this? Did the Lord Christ not convict the world of sin when He says: If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin? But lest anyone perhaps say that this pertains properly to the Jews, not to the world, does He not say in another place: If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own (John 15:22, 19)? Did He not convict of justice where He says: Just Father, the world has not known Thee (John 17:25)? Did He not convict of judgement where He says that He will say to those on the left: Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41)? And many other places are found in the holy Gospel where Christ convicts the world of these things. Why is it, then, that He attributes this as if properly to the Holy Spirit? Is it perhaps that, because Christ spoke only among the nation of the Jews, He does not seem to have convicted the world, so that he is understood to be convicted who hears the one convicting him? But the Holy Spirit, in His disciples spread throughout the whole world, is understood to have convicted not one nation but the world. For He says this to them as He is about to ascend into heaven: It is not yours to know the times or the moments which the Father has set in His own power: but

you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:7–8). This is to reprove the world. But who would dare to say that the Holy Spirit reproves the world through the disciples of Christ, and that Christ Himself does not reprove it, when the Apostle cries out, Do you wish to have proof of Him Who speaks in me, Christ (2 Cor. 13:3)? Those, then, whom the Holy Spirit reproves, Christ certainly reproves as well. But, as far as it seems to me, since through the Holy Spirit charity was to be poured out in their hearts (Rom. 5:5), which casts out fear (1 John 4:18), by which they could have been hindered from daring to reprove the world that raged with persecutions, He therefore said, He will reprove the world: as if He were saying, He will pour out charity in your hearts; for thus, with fear driven away, you will have freedom to reprove. Now we have often said that the works of the Trinity are inseparable (above, Tractate 20); but that the Persons had to be commended one by one, so that both the unity and the Trinity may be understood not only without separation, but also without confusion.

2. He then explains what He meant by of sin, and of justice, and of judgement. Of sin indeed, He says, because they have not believed in Me. For He set this sin before the others, as though it were the only one; because while this remains the others are held fast, and when this departs the others are remitted. But of justice, He says, because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer. Here it must first be seen, if anyone is rightly reproved of sin, how he may rightly be reproved also of justice. For if a sinner is to be reproved because he is a sinner, will anyone think that a just man too is to be reproved because he is just? Far from it. For even if a just man is at some time reproved, he is rightly reproved for this reason, that, as it is written, There is no just man on earth who will do good and will not sin. Therefore even when a just man is reproved, he is reproved of sin, not of justice. Since also in that which we read as divinely said, Do not be made very just (Eccl. 7:21, 17), it is not the justice of the wise man that is censured, but the pride of the presumptuous. He, then, who becomes very just becomes unjust by that very excess. For he makes himself very just who says that he has no sin; or who thinks that he is made just not by the grace of God but by his own will as sufficient: nor is he just by living rightly, but rather puffed up, by thinking himself to be what he is not. In what way, then, is the world to be reproved of justice, except of the justice of believers? It is therefore reproved of sin, because it does not believe in Christ; and it is reproved of the justice of those who believe. For the very comparison with the faithful is the censure of the unfaithful. This the explanation itself also sufficiently shows. For, wishing to open up what He had said, But of justice, He says, because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer. He does not say, And they will see Me no longer, of whom He had said, because they have not believed in Me. But in explaining what He called sin, He spoke of them, saying, because they have not believed in Me: whereas in explaining what justice He meant, of which the world is reproved, He turned to those very men to whom He was speaking, and said, Because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer. Wherefore the world is reproved of sin indeed as its own, but of justice as another's,

as darkness is reproved by light: For all things that are reproved, says the Apostle, are made manifest by the light (Eph. 5:13). For how great the evil of those who do not believe is can appear not only through itself, but also from the good of those who do believe. And since this has been the customary saying of unbelievers, How do we believe what we do not see? therefore the righteousness of believers had to be defined thus, Because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see Me. For blessed are they who do not see, and believe (John 20:29). For even in the case of those who saw Christ, their faith was not praised in this, that they believed what they saw, that is, the Son of man; but in that they believed what they did not see, that is, the Son of God. But when the very form of the servant had also been withdrawn from their sight, then indeed was fulfilled in every respect, The just man lives by faith (Rom. 1:17; Hab. 2:4, and Heb. 11:1). For faith is, as it is defined in the Epistle which is to the Hebrews, the substance of those who hope, the conviction of things that are not seen.

3. But what is, You will no longer see Me? For He does not say, I go to the Father, and you will not see Me, so that He might be understood to have signified an interval of time during which He would not be seen, whether short or long, yet in any case bounded; but by saying, You will no longer see Me, the Truth foretold, as it were, that they would never henceforth see Christ. Is this righteousness, never to see Christ, and yet to believe in Him, when faith, by which the just man lives, is praised precisely because he believes that he will at some time see the Christ whom he does not see now? Finally, according to this righteousness, are we going to say that the apostle Paul was not just, who confesses that he saw Christ after His ascension into heaven (1 Cor. 15:8), of which time He had surely already said, You will no longer see Me? According to this righteousness, was the most glorious Stephen not just, who, when he was being stoned, said: Behold, I see heaven opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55)? What then is, I go to the Father, and you will no longer see Me, unless [it means]: as I am, while I am with you? For then He was still mortal, in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3), He who could hunger and thirst, grow weary and sleep: this Christ, then, that is, Christ such as this, they were no longer going to see once He had passed from this world to the Father; and this is the righteousness of faith, of which the Apostle says, Even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know Him (2 Cor. 5:16). Your righteousness, then, He says, by which the world will be reproved, will be this, that I go to the Father, and you will no longer see Me: since in Him whom you will not see you will believe, in Me; and when you see Me as I shall then be, you will not see Me as I am with you now; you will not see Me lowly, but exalted; you will not see Me mortal, but everlasting; you will not see Me about to be judged, but about to judge: and concerning this faith of yours, that is, your righteousness, the Holy Spirit will reprove the unbelieving world.

4. He will reprove it also concerning judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged. Who is this, unless he of whom He says in another place, Behold, the prince of the world comes, and in Me he will find nothing (John 14:30); that is, nothing of his own right, nothing that

pertains to him, namely no sin at all? For it is through this that the devil is prince of the world. For the devil is not prince of heaven and earth and of all things that are in them, the sense in which the world is understood where it is said, And the world was made through Him; but the devil is prince of the world of which He immediately adds there and says, And the world did not know Him (John 1:10), that is, unbelieving men, of whom the world is full throughout the whole globe of lands: among whom groans the faithful world, which He chose out of the world, He through Whom the world was made; of which He Himself says, The Son of man did not come to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through Him (John 3:17). The world is condemned by His judging, the world is saved by His coming to its aid: since, just as a tree is full of leaves and fruits, just as a threshing floor is full of chaff and grain, so the world is full of unbelievers and believers. The prince, therefore, of this world, that is, the prince of these darknesses, that is, of the unbelievers; from whom the world is rescued, to whom it is said, You were once darkness; but now light in the Lord (Eph. 5:8): the prince of this world, of whom He says elsewhere, Now the prince of this world has been cast out (John 12:31), has certainly been judged; since he has been irrevocably destined for the judgement of eternal fire. And so concerning this judgement, by which the prince of the world has been judged, the world is convicted by the Holy Spirit; since it is judged together with its prince, whom the proud and ungodly man imitates. For if God, as the apostle Peter says, did not spare the angels who sinned, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld, handed them over to be kept for punishment in the judgement (2 Pet. 2:4); how is the world not convicted by the Holy Spirit concerning this judgement, when the Apostle speaks these things in the Holy Spirit? Let men therefore believe in Christ, that they may not be convicted concerning the sin of their unbelief, by which all sins are held fast: let them pass over into the number of the faithful, that they may not be convicted concerning the righteousness of those whom, justified as they are, they do not imitate: let them beware of the judgement to come, that they may not be judged with the prince of the world, whom, judged as he is, they imitate. For lest the hard pride of mortals suppose that it will be spared, it must be terrified by the punishment of the proud angels.

Tractate 96. On these words, I still have many things to say to you; but you cannot bear them now: but when that Spirit of truth comes, He will teach you all truth. Chapter 16, verses 12, 13.

1. In this little chapter of the holy Gospel, where the Lord says to His disciples, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now, the question that first presents itself is how He said above, All things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you (John 15:15): and here says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But how He said that He had done what He had not yet done, as though He had done it, just as the prophet testifies that God has done the things that are to come, saying, Who has done the things that are to come (Isa. 45:11, according to the Septuagint), we have already explained, as best we could, when we were treating those very words. Now

what, then, these things are which the Apostles were not then able to bear, you perhaps wish to know. But which of us would dare to say that he is now capable of those things which they were not able to grasp? And for this reason you are not to expect them to be told by me, things which I perhaps would not grasp if they were told to me by another; nor would you be able to bear them, even if I were great enough that you should hear from me these things which are too high for you. And it can indeed happen that there are some among you already fit for grasping them, which others are not yet able to grasp; and if not all the things of which that divine Teacher said, I have yet many things to say to you, yet perhaps some of them: but what these things are which He Himself did not say, it is rash to wish to presume and to say. For the Apostles were then not yet fit even to die for Christ, to whom He said, You cannot follow Me now; whence the first of them, Peter, who had already presumed that he was able for this, experienced something other than he thought (John 13:36–38): and yet afterwards both men and women, boys and girls, young men and maidens, old together with young, innumerable, were crowned with martyrdom; and the sheep were found able to do what, at the time when the Lord was speaking these things, the shepherds were not yet able to bear. Ought it then to have been said to those sheep, at that moment of trial in which it was necessary to strive even unto death for the truth, and to shed their blood for the name or the teaching of Christ; ought it, I say, to have been said to them, Which of you would dare to think himself fit for martyrdom, when Peter had not yet been fit for it, at the time when the Lord Himself was instructing him face to face? So, then, someone might say that it ought not to be told to Christian peoples, who desire to hear what the things are of which the Lord then said, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. If the Apostles were not yet able, much less are you able: since perhaps many are thus able to hear what Peter was not yet able to then, just as many are able to be crowned with martyrdom, which Peter was not yet able to then: especially now that the Holy Spirit has been sent, Who then had not yet been sent, of Whom He straightway added, and said, But when that Spirit of truth comes, He will teach you all truth; thus indeed showing that they were unable to bear the things He had to say for this reason, that the Holy Spirit had not yet come to them.

2. See, let us grant that it is so, that many are now able to bear, the Holy Spirit having been sent, those things which the disciples were then unable to bear, He not yet having been sent: do we therefore know what the things are which He was unwilling to say, which we would then know if we read or heard them as spoken by Him? For it is one thing to know whether they can be borne by us or by you; but another to know what they are, whether they can be borne or cannot. Since He Himself has kept silent about them, which of us may say, They are these or those? Or if he dares to say it, whence does he prove it? For who is so vain or rash that, even when he has said true things to whom he wished and what he wished, he should affirm without any divine testimony that these are the things which the Lord was then unwilling to say? Which of us would do this, and not incur the greatest guilt of rashness, in whom neither prophetic nor apostolic authority stands out? For surely, if we had read any of them in the Books confirmed by canonical authority, which after

the ascension of the Lord were written, it would have been little to have read this, unless it were also read there that this was among those things which the Lord then would not tell the disciples, because they could not bear them. As if, for example, I were to say that what we read at the head of this Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God (John 1:1–2), and the other things that follow, since they were written afterwards, and it is not narrated that the Lord Jesus said them while He was here in the flesh, but one of His Apostles wrote them down, His Spirit revealing them to him, are among those things which the Lord would not then say, because the disciples could not bear them; who would listen to me saying such things so rashly? But if, where we read this, we were also to read that, who would not believe so great an apostle?

3. But this too seems to me most absurdly said, that the disciples could not then bear those things concerning invisible and most lofty matters which we find in the apostolic Letters, which were written afterwards, and which it is not narrated that the Lord said when He was visibly with them. For why could they not then bear those things which now anyone reads in their Books, anyone bears, even if he does not understand them? Some things indeed in the holy Scriptures unbelieving men both do not understand when they read or hear them, and cannot bear when read or heard: as the Pagans, that through Him Who was crucified the world was made; as the Jews, that He is the Son of God Who loosed the sabbath in the way in which they themselves celebrate it; as the Sabellians, that the Trinity is Father and Son and Holy Spirit; as the Arians, that the Son is equal to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son; as the Photinians, that Christ is not only a man like us, but also God equal to God the Father; as the Manichaeans, that Christ Jesus, through Whom we are to be set free, deigned to be born in the flesh and of the flesh: and all the other men of perverse and diverse sects certainly cannot bear whatever is found in the holy Scriptures and in the catholic faith that is brought forward against their errors; just as we cannot bear their sacrilegious vanities and lying insanities. For what is it not to be able to bear, except not to hold with an equable mind? But all the things that were written after the ascension of the Lord with canonical truth and authority, what believer, or even catechumen, before he receives the Holy Spirit on being baptized, does not read and hear with an equable mind, even if he does not yet understand them as he ought? How then could the disciples not bear anything of what was written after the ascension of the Lord, even when the Holy Spirit had not yet been sent to them, when catechumens now bear all things, not yet having received the Holy Spirit? For although the sacraments of the faithful are not disclosed to them, this is not done because they cannot bear them; but so that they may be desired by them the more ardently, the more honourably they are hidden from them.

4. Wherefore, dearly beloved, do not expect to hear from us the things which the Lord then would not tell the disciples, because they could not yet bear them: but rather make progress in charity, which is poured forth in your hearts through the Spirit

which has been given to you (Rom. 5:5); so that, fervent in spirit and loving spiritual things, you may be able to know the spiritual light and the spiritual voice, which carnal men cannot bear, not by some sign appearing to the bodily eyes, nor by some sound resounding in the bodily ears, but by inward sight and hearing. For what is wholly unknown is not loved. But when that is loved which is known in however small a part, by that very love it comes about that it is known better and more fully. If then you make progress in charity, which the Holy Spirit pours out in hearts, He will teach you all truth: or, as other manuscripts have, He will lead you in all truth: whence it is said, Lead me, O Lord, in Thy way, and I shall walk in Thy truth (Ps. 85:11). Thus it will come about that you learn those things which the Lord would not say then, not from outward teachers, but that you may all be teachable by God (John 6:45); so that those very things which you have learned and believed, through readings and sermons applied from without, concerning the nature of God, not bodily, nor enclosed in any place, nor stretched out as if in bulk through infinite spaces of places, but everywhere whole and perfect and infinite, without the brightness of colours, without the shapes of outlines, without the marks of letters, without the sequence of syllables, you may be able to behold with the mind itself. See, I have said something which is perhaps of that kind, and yet you have received it; and not only have you been able to bear it, but you have even heard it gladly. But that inner master, Who, while still speaking outwardly to the disciples, said, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now, if He willed to say to us inwardly what I have said about the incorporeal nature of God, in the way that He says it to the holy angels, who always see the face of the Father (Matt. 18:10), we could not yet bear it. Accordingly what He says, He will teach you all truth, or, He will lead you in all truth, I do not think can be fulfilled in anyone's mind in this life (for who, living in this body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul [Wis. 9:15], could know all truth, when the Apostle says, We know in part?); but because it is brought about through the Holy Spirit, of Whom we have now received a pledge (2 Cor. 1:22), that we may come also to that fullness itself: of which the same apostle says, But then face to face; and, Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known (1 Cor. 13:9, 12): not that he knows the whole in this life, which, up to that perfection, the Lord promised would be ours in the future through the charity of the Spirit, saying, He will teach you all truth; or, He will lead you in all truth.

5. Since these things are so, dearly beloved, I warn you in the charity of Christ to beware of impure seducers and sects of obscene foulness, of which the Apostle says, But the things which are done by them in secret, it is shameful even to speak of (Eph. 5:12): lest, when they begin to teach horrible uncleannesses, which human ears, whatever kind they may be, cannot bear, they say that these are the very things of which the Lord says, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; and assert that it comes about through the Holy Spirit that those unclean and abominable things can be borne.