Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus CIII-CXVI

7. But how the Father gave those words to the Son Himself, with what words will a man be able to explain? The question seems easier indeed if He is believed to have received those words from the Father according to that by which He is the son of man. Yet, born of the Virgin, when and how He learned them, who will declare, since even that generation of His which was made from the Virgin, who will declare? But if He is thought to have received these words from the Father according to that by which He is begotten of the Father and co-eternal with the Father, let no time be thought of there, as though He existed earlier without having them, and afterwards received them so as to have what He did not have; for whatever God the Father gave to God the Son, He gave by begetting. For the Father so gave to the Son those things without which the Son could not be, just as He gave to Him that He should be. For how else would He give any words to the Word, in Whom He ineffably spoke all things? But what follows must now be awaited in another sermon.

Tractate 107. On that which Jesus says, I pray for them, etc., as far as this, That they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. Chapter 17, verses 9-13.

1. When the Lord was speaking to the Father about those whom He already had as disciples, among other things He also said this: I pray for them: I do not pray for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me. By the world He wishes to be understood here those who live according to the lust of the world, and are not in that lot of grace, that they should be chosen by Him out of the world. Therefore He says that He prays not for the world, but for those whom the Father has given Him: for by the very fact that the Father has already given them to Him, it has come about that they do not belong to that world for which He does not pray.

2. Then He adds, For they are Thine. For it is not the case that, because the Father gave them to the Son, He Himself lost those whom He gave: since the Son still goes on and says, And all My things are Thine, and Thine are Mine. Here it is sufficiently apparent how all things that are the Father's belong to the only-begotten Son; namely by this, that He too is Himself God, and was born of the Father equal to the Father: not in the way it was said to one of the two sons, namely the elder, You are always with me, and all my things are yours (Luke 15:31). For that was said of all those creatures which are below the holy rational creature, which are certainly subject to the Church; in which universal Church are understood both those two sons, the elder and the younger, together with all the holy Angels, to whom we shall be equal in the kingdom of Christ and of God (Matt. 22:30): but this was said in such a way, And all My things are Thine, and Thine are Mine, that here is included even the rational creature itself, which is subject to none but God, so that all things which are below it may be subject to it. Since therefore this belongs to God the Father, it would not at the same time belong to the Son also, unless He were equal to the Father: for it was of this very [creature] that He was treating when He said, I do not pray for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me: for they are Thine, and all My things are Thine, and Thine are Mine. Nor is it right that the saints, of whom He spoke these things, should belong to anyone except Him by Whom they were created and sanctified: and accordingly all things also that are theirs must belong to Him to Whom they themselves also belong. Since therefore they belong both to the Father and to the Son, they show those to be equal to whom they equally belong. But that which He says, when He was speaking concerning the Holy Spirit,

All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He will receive of Mine, and will announce it to you (John 16:15); He spoke of those things which belong to the very divinity of the Father, in which He is equal to Him, having all things that He has. For the Holy Spirit was not going to receive from the creature, which is subject to the Father and the Son, what He says, He will receive of Mine; but assuredly from the Father, from Whom the Spirit proceeds, from Whom the Son also is born.

3. And I am glorified, He says, in them. Now He speaks of His glorification as though it had taken place, when it was still to come; but above He was asking of the Father that it should take place. But whether this is the glorification of which He had said, And now glorify Thou Me, Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee (John 17:1, 5), must certainly be inquired into. For if it is with Thee, how is it in them? Is it when this very thing becomes known to them, and through them to all who believe them as His witnesses? We can plainly understand that the Lord said this of the Apostles, that He is glorified in them: for by saying that it was already done, He showed that it had already been predestined, and He wished that what was to come should be held as certain.

4. And now, He says, I am not in the world, and these are in the world. If you attend to that very hour in which He was speaking, both were still in the world, namely both He Himself and those of whom He was saying this: for we neither can nor ought to take it according to the progress of heart and life, so that they are said to be still in the world for this reason, that they still savour worldly things, while He is said to be no longer in the world, because He savours divine things. For one word is placed here which does not at all allow us to understand it so: because He does not say, And I am not in the world, but, Now I am not in the world, showing by this that He had been in the world and now is not. Is it right, then, for us to believe that He at some time savoured worldly things, and, freed from this error, no longer savours them? Who would clothe himself in so impious a sense? It remains, therefore, that according to that in which He too had formerly been in the world, He said that He was no longer in the world; assuredly in bodily presence, showing by this that His absence from the world would now come soon, but theirs more slowly, in that He said that He was no longer here but that they were here, when both He and they were still here. For thus He spoke, a man suiting Himself to men, as the human manner of speaking goes. Do we not daily say, He is no longer here, of someone who is about to depart very soon? And this is especially wont to be said of the dying. Although the Lord Himself too, as though foreseeing what might trouble readers, added, And I come to Thee, thus explaining in a manner why He had said, Now I am not in the world.

5. He commends them, therefore, to the Father, those whom He is about to leave by His bodily absence, saying: Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, those whom Thou hast given Me. Certainly as a man He asks God for His disciples, whom He received from God. But attend to what follows: That they may be one, He says, as We also are. He does not say, That they may be one with Us, or, That they and We may be one, as We are one; but He says, That they may be one as We also are. That they, assuredly, in their own nature

may be one, just as We too are one in Ours. He would beyond doubt not say this truly, unless He said it according to this, that He is God of the same nature as the Father also is, according to what He said elsewhere, I and the Father are one (John 10:30): not according to that whereby He is also man; for according to this He said, The Father is greater than I (John 14:28). But since God and man is one and the same person, we understand the man in His asking, but we understand God in this, that He Himself and He Whom He asks are one. But there is still a place in what follows where this matter must be discussed more carefully.

6. But here there follows: While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. With Me coming to Thee, He says, keep them in Thy name, in which I Myself also kept them when I was with them. In the name of the Father the Son as man kept His disciples, being set among them by a human presence; but the Father also, in the name of the Son, kept those whom He heard when they asked in the name of the Son. For to these the same Son had said: Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in My name, He will give it to you (John 16:23). Nor ought we to take this so carnally, as though the Father and the Son keep us by turns, the guarding of the two alternating in keeping us, as if the one succeeds when the other has departed: for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Who is the one true and blessed God, guard us together. But Scripture does not lift us up unless it comes down to us: just as the Word made flesh came down in order to lift up, and did not fall in order to lie prostrate. If we have recognized Him coming down, let us rise with Him as He lifts up; and let us understand that, when He speaks thus, He distinguishes the persons, and does not separate the natures. When, therefore, the Son was keeping His disciples by bodily presence, the Father was not waiting to succeed the Son in guarding when the Son departed; but both were keeping them by spiritual power: and when the Son took His bodily presence away from them, He held the spiritual guarding together with the Father. For when the Son as man received them to be guarded, He did not take them away from the Father's guarding: and when the Father gave them to the Son to be guarded, He did not give them without Him to Whom He gave; but He gave them to the Son as man, not without God, that is, that very same Son.

7. The Son therefore goes on, and says: Those whom Thou gavest Me I have guarded: and none of them has perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture may be fulfilled. The betrayer of Christ is called the son of perdition, predestined to perdition, according to the Scripture which is prophesied concerning him most of all in the hundred and eighth psalm.

8. But now, He says, I come to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. See, He says that He speaks in the world, He Who a little before had said, I am no longer in the world: why He said that, we have explained there, or rather we have shown that He Himself explained it. So then, because He had not yet gone away, He was still here; and because He was soon to go away, He was in a certain manner already not here. But what this joy is of which He says, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves, has already been expressed above, where He says, That they may be one as we also are. This joy of His, that is, conferred by Him upon them, in them

He says is to be fulfilled; and for this reason He said that He had spoken in the world. This is that peace and blessedness in the age to come, for the attaining of which we must live temperately and justly and piously in this age.

Tractate 108. On what Jesus says, I have given them Thy word; as far as this, That they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:14–19).

1. The Lord, still speaking to the Father and praying for His disciples, says: I have given them Thy word, and the world has held them in hatred. They had not yet experienced this in their own sufferings, which followed them afterwards; but in His usual manner He says these things, foretelling things to come in words of the past tense. Then, adding the reason why the world hated them: Because they are not, He says, of the world, as I also am not of the world. This was conferred on them by regeneration: for by generation they were of the world, for which reason He had already said to them, I have chosen you out of the world (John 15:19). It was therefore granted to them that, like Himself, they too should not be of the world, He Himself delivering them from the world. But He was never of the world: because even according to the form of a servant He was born of the Holy Spirit, of Whom they were reborn. For if they are for this reason no longer of the world, because they have been reborn of the Holy Spirit, for this reason He was never of the world, because He was born of the Holy Spirit.

2. I do not ask, He says, that Thou take them out of the world, but that Thou keep them from evil. For it was still necessary for them, although they were no longer of the world, nevertheless to be in the world. He repeats the same statement: They are not of the world, He says, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. For thus are they kept from evil, which He prayed above might come about. But it may be asked how they were no longer of the world, if they were not yet sanctified in truth; or, if they already were, why He asks that they may be. Is it not because those who are sanctified also make progress in the same sanctity and become holier; and this not without the help of the grace of God, but by His sanctifying their advance Who sanctified their beginning? Whence also the Apostle says: He Who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6). Thus the heirs of the New Testament are sanctified in truth, of which truth the sanctifications of the Old Testament had been shadows: and when they are sanctified in truth, they are surely sanctified in Christ, Who truly said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Likewise, when He says, The truth will set you free, a little later, explaining what He had said, If, He says, the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free (John 8:32, 36); so as to show that what He had first called the truth He afterwards called the Son. What else, then, did He say in this place too, Sanctify them in truth, but, sanctify them in Me?

3. Then He continues, and does not cease to intimate this more openly: Thy word, He says, is truth. What else did He say than, I am the truth? For the Greek Gospel has λόγος, which is also read there where it is said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. And surely the Word Himself we know

to be the only-begotten Son of God, which was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14). Hence here too it could have been put, and in some codices it has been put, Thy Word is truth; just as in some codices there too it is written, In the beginning was the speech. But in the Greek, without any variation, both there and here it is λόγος. So the Father sanctifies in the truth, that is, in His Word, in His Only-begotten, His own heirs and His co-heirs.

4. But for now He is still speaking about the Apostles; for He goes on to add, As Thou hast sent Me into the world, I too have sent them into the world. Whom did He send, if not His Apostles? For the very name of Apostles, since it is Greek, signifies in Latin nothing other than "those sent". So God sent His Son, not in the flesh of sin, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3); and His Son sent those whom, born in the flesh of sin, He sanctified from the stain of sin.

5. But since, through the fact that the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, has been made head of the Church, they are His members, He therefore says what follows, And for them I sanctify Myself. For what is, And for them I sanctify Myself, if not, I sanctify them in Myself, since they too are I? For those of whom He says this are, as I have said, His members, and the head and the body are one Christ: as the Apostle teaches and says concerning the seed of Abraham, But if you are Christ's, then you are the seed of Abraham; after he had said above, He does not say, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:29, 16). If then the seed of Abraham is Christ, what else was said to those to whom it was said, Then you are the seed of Abraham, if not, then you are Christ? Hence it is that in another place the same apostle says: Now I rejoice in sufferings for you, and fill up those things which are lacking of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh (Col. 1:24). He did not say, of my afflictions, but, of Christ: because he was a member of Christ; and in his persecutions, such as it behoved Christ to suffer in His whole body, he too was filling up His afflictions for his own share. That this may be certain in this place too, attend to what follows. For when He had said, And for them I sanctify Myself, so that we might understand that He said this because He was sanctifying them in Himself, He at once added, That they too may be sanctified in the truth. And what is this other than, in Me, according as the truth is that Word, God in the beginning? In Whom the Son of man Himself too was sanctified from the beginning of His creation, when the Word was made flesh; because the Word and man were made one person. Then, therefore, He sanctified Himself in Himself, that is, Himself the man in Himself the Word; because the Word and man is one Christ, sanctifying the man in the Word. But on account of His members, And for them, He says, I, that is, so that it may profit them too, because they too are I; just as it profited Me in Myself, because I am man without them: And I sanctify Myself, that is, them in Me as Myself I sanctify, since in Me they too are I. That they too may be sanctified in the truth. What is they too, if not, just as I; in the truth, which I Myself am? Then, now not only about the Apostles, but also about