Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus CIII-CXVI

the things that were done concerning the Lord before Pontius Pilate the governor, let us consider from another starting point.

Tractate 114.

From the place, Then they lead Jesus to Caiaphas into the praetorium; up to this, That the word of Jesus might be fulfilled which He spoke, signifying by what death He was to die. Chapter 18, verses 28-32.

1. Next let us see what things were done with our Lord Jesus Christ, or concerning Him, before Pontius Pilate the governor, so far as John the evangelist indicates. For he returns to the place in his narrative where he had left it in order to set out Peter's denial. For he had already said, And Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest (John 18:24); and returning from there to where he had left Peter warming himself at the fire in the courtyard, after he had finished the whole of his denial, which was made three times, he says, Then they lead Jesus to Caiaphas into the praetorium. For he had said that He was sent to Caiaphas by Annas, his colleague and father-in-law. But if to Caiaphas, why into the praetorium? By this nothing else is meant to be understood than where the governor Pilate lived. Either, then, for some pressing reason Caiaphas had gone from the house of Annas, where both had come together to hear Jesus, to the governor's praetorium, and had left Jesus to his father-in-law to be heard; or Pilate had taken up his praetorium in the house of Caiaphas, and the house was so large that it held its master living apart and the judge apart.

2. Now it was morning, and they themselves, that is, those who were leading Jesus, did not enter the praetorium, that is, that part of the house which Pilate occupied, if it was in fact the house of Caiaphas. And setting out the reason why they did not enter the praetorium, he says, That they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. For they had begun to keep the days of unleavened bread, on which days it was a defilement for them to enter the dwelling of a foreigner. O impious blindness! They would be defiled, forsooth, by another's dwelling, and would not be defiled by their own crime? They feared to be defiled by the praetorium of a foreign judge, and did not fear to be defiled by the blood of an innocent brother: to say only this for the present, wherein the guilty conscience of evil men was held fast. For that it was also the Lord Who was being led to death by their impiety, and that the Giver of life was being slain, let that be set down not to their conscience but to their ignorance.

3. Pilate therefore went out to them and said: What accusation do you bring against this man? They answered and said to him: If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed Him over to you. Let those freed from unclean spirits be asked and answer, the sick healed, the lepers cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dumb speaking, the blind seeing, the dead rising again, and, what surpasses all, the foolish made wise, whether Jesus is an evildoer. But those were saying these things of whom He Himself had already foretold through the prophet, They repaid me evil for good (Ps. 34:12).

4. Pilate therefore said to them: Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your Law. The Jews therefore said to him: It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. What is it that insane cruelty is saying? Were they not putting to death the one whom they were offering to be put to death? Or perhaps the cross does not kill? So foolish are those who do not pursue wisdom but persecute it. But what does it mean, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death? If He is a malefactor, why is it not lawful? Did not the Law command them not to spare malefactors, especially those who lead men astray from their God (such as they thought this man to be) (Deut. 13:5)? But it is to be understood that they said it was not lawful for them to put anyone to death on account of the sanctity of the feast day, which they had already begun to celebrate; on account of which they also feared being defiled by entering the praetorium. Have you become so hardened, false Israelites? Have you so lost all sense through excessive malice that you believe yourselves undefiled by the blood of the innocent for this reason, that you handed it over to another to be shed? Is Pilate too going to kill with his own hands Him who is thrust by you upon his authority to be killed? If you did not want Him to be killed, if you did not lie in wait for Him, if you did not buy Him with money to be handed over to you, if you did not seize, bind and lead Him off, if you did not offer Him to hands to be killed, did not demand it with your voices, then boast that He was not killed by you. But if, after all these deeds of yours that went before, you also shouted, Crucify, crucify (John 19:6), hear what the prophet too cries out against you: The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword (Ps. 56:5). Behold with what weapons, with what arrows, with what sword you killed the just one, when you said that it was not lawful for you to put anyone to death. Hence it is that, although the chief priests had not come to seize Jesus but had sent others, Luke the evangelist nevertheless says at the same place in his narrative: And Jesus said, he says, to those who had come to Him, the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders: You have come out as against a robber (Luke 22:52), and so on. Just as, then, the chief priests came not in their own persons but through those whom they had sent to seize Jesus, and what else was this than that they themselves came in the power of their own command? so all who with impious voices shouted for Christ to be crucified killed Him, not indeed in their own persons, but nevertheless they themselves did so, through him who was driven to this crime by their shouting.

5. But as for what John the evangelist adds, That the word of Jesus might be fulfilled which He spoke, signifying by what death He was to die: if we wish to understand the death of the cross here, as though the Jews said, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death, for this reason, that to be killed is one thing and to be crucified another, I do not see how this can be understood consistently, since they gave this answer to the words of Pilate in which he had said to them, Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your Law. Could they not, then, have taken Him and crucified Him themselves, if by such a kind of punishment they wished to avoid putting anyone to death? And who would not see how absurd it is that those for whom it is not lawful to kill anyone should be allowed to crucify anyone? What of the fact that the Lord Himself also calls that same death of His, that is, the death of the cross, a killing

as we read in Mark, where He says: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and spit upon Him, and scourge Him, and kill Him, and on the third day He will rise again" (Mark 10:33–34)? Clearly, then, by saying these things the Lord signified by what death He was going to die: not that He wished the death of the cross to be understood here, but that the Jews were going to hand Him over to the Gentiles, that is, to the Romans. For Pilate was a Roman, and the Romans had sent him into Judaea as governor. So, that this word of Jesus might be fulfilled, that is, that the Gentiles should kill Him when He had been handed over to them, which Jesus had foretold would happen, therefore, when Pilate, who was a Roman judge, wished to give Him back to the Jews so that they might judge Him according to their Law, they refused to accept Him, saying, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. And thus the word of Jesus was fulfilled, which He foretold concerning His own death, that the Gentiles should kill Him when He had been handed over by the Jews; with a lesser crime than the Jews, who in this way wished to make themselves as it were strangers to His killing, so that it was not their innocence but their madness that was shown.

Tractate 115.

On that which is said, Pilate therefore entered the praetorium again; as far as this, Now Barabbas was a robber. Chapter 18, verses 33-40.

1. What Pilate said to Christ, and what He answered Pilate, is to be considered and treated in this discourse. For when it had been said to the Jews, "Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your Law", and they had answered, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death; Pilate entered the praetorium again, and called Jesus, and said to Him: Art Thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered: Do you say this of yourself, or did others tell you about Me?" The Lord certainly knew both what He Himself asked and what that man was going to answer; but nevertheless He wished it to be said, not so that He Himself might know, but so that there might be written what He wished us to know. "Pilate answered: Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have handed Thee over to me: what hast Thou done? Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly fight, so that I should not be handed over to the Jews: but now My kingdom is not from here." This is what the good Master wished us to know: but first there had to be shown to us the vain opinion of men about His kingdom, whether of the Gentiles or of the Jews, from whom Pilate had heard it; as though He ought to be punished with death on this account, that He had aspired to an unlawful kingship; or because those who reign are wont to envy those who are going to reign, and evidently care had to be taken lest His kingdom should be hostile either to the Romans or to the Jews. Now the Lord could have given what He says, My kingdom is not of this world, etc., in answer to the governor's first question, when he said to Him, Art Thou the king of the Jews? but when, questioning him in turn whether he said this of himself or had heard it from others, He wished by that man's answer to show that this had been laid against Him before him by the Jews as a charge: disclosing to us the

thoughts of men, which He knew, that they are vain (Ps. 93:11); and, after Pilate's reply, now answering the Jews and the Gentiles more opportunely and more fittingly, My kingdom is not of this world. For if He had answered Pilate straight away when he asked, He would have seemed to answer not the Jews as well, but only the Gentiles, who held this opinion of Him. But now, since Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thy nation and the chief priests have handed Thee over to me, he removed from himself the suspicion by which he might have been thought to have said of his own accord what he had said, that Jesus was king of the Jews, showing that he had heard it from the Jews. Then, by saying, What hast Thou done? he showed clearly enough that this had been laid against Him as a charge: as though he were saying, If Thou deniest that Thou art a king, what hast Thou done that Thou shouldst be handed over to me? As if it would be no wonder that one who called himself a king should be handed over to a judge to be punished; but if he did not say this, it would have to be asked of him what else he had perhaps done for which he deserved to be handed over to a judge.

2. Hear, then, Jews and Gentiles; hear, circumcision; hear, uncircumcision; hear, all earthly kingdoms: I do not hinder your dominion in this world, My kingdom is not of this world. Do not fear with that most vain fear with which Herod the elder was terrified when the birth of Christ was announced, and killed so many infants so that death might reach Him (Matt. 2:3, 16), made more cruel by fearing than by being angry: My kingdom, He says, is not of this world. What more do you want? Come to the kingdom which is not of this world; come by believing, and do not rage by fearing. He does indeed say in prophecy concerning God the Father, But I have been established as king by Him over Sion, His holy mountain (Ps. 2:6); but that Sion and that mountain is not of this world. For what is His kingdom but those who believe in Him, to whom He says, You are not of the world, just as I also am not of the world? Although He willed them to be in the world: for which reason He said of them to the Father, I do not ask that Thou take them out of the world, but that Thou keep them from evil (John 17:16, 15). Hence here too He does not say, My kingdom is not in this world; but, is not of this world. And when He was proving this by saying, If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly fight, so that I should not be handed over to the Jews, He does not say, But now My kingdom is not here; but, is not from here. For His kingdom is here until the end of the age, having tares mixed within it until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the age, when the reapers, that is the angels, will come and gather out of His kingdom all stumbling-blocks (Matt. 13:38–41); which certainly would not happen if His kingdom were not here. But yet it is not from here, because it is a sojourner in the world: for He says to His kingdom, You are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world (John 15:19). They were, then, of the world when they were not His kingdom but belonged to the prince of the world. Of the world, therefore, is whatever of men has been created indeed by the true God, but begotten from the vitiated and condemned stock of Adam; but whatever from there has been regenerated in Christ has been made a kingdom no longer of the world. For thus God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Col. 1:13): of which kingdom He says, My kingdom

is not of this world; or, My kingdom is not from here.

3. Pilate therefore said to Him: So Thou art a king? Jesus answered: You say that I am a king. Not because He feared to confess Himself a king; but You say is so balanced that He neither denies that He is a king (for He is a king Whose kingdom is not of this world), nor confesses Himself to be such a king as one whose kingdom might be thought to be of this world. For it was such a king that he had in mind who had said, So Thou art a king? and to him the answer was given, You say that I am a king. For You say was said as if it had been said: being carnal, you speak carnally.

4. Then He adds: For this was I born, and for this I came into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. The syllable of this pronoun in what He says, In hoc natus sum, is not to be lengthened, as though He had said, In this matter was I born; but shortened, as though He had said, For this thing was I born, or for this was I born; just as He says, For this I came into the world. For in the Greek Gospel there is nothing ambiguous in this expression. Hence it is plain that He here called to mind His temporal birth, by which, being incarnate, He came into the world; not that birth without beginning by which He was God, through Whom the Father founded the world. For this, then, He said He was born, that is, born on account of this, and for this He came into the world, namely by being born of the Virgin, that He might bear witness to the truth. But because faith is not of all (2 Thess. 3:2), He added and said: Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. He hears, indeed, with the inner ears, that is, he obeys My voice: which would amount to the same as if He said, He believes Me. Since, then, Christ bears witness to the truth, He certainly bears witness to Himself: for His is the voice, I am the truth (John 14:6): and He said also in another place, I bear witness of Myself (John 8:18). But in saying, Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice, He commended the grace by which He calls according to His purpose. Of which purpose the Apostle says, We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to the purpose of God (Rom. 8:28); the purpose, that is, of Him Who calls, not of those who are called: which elsewhere is set down more openly thus, Labour together with the Gospel according to the power of God, Who saves us and calls us with His holy calling; not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace (2 Tim. 1:8–9). For if we consider the nature in which we were created, since the truth created all, who is not of the truth? But not all are those to whom it is granted by the truth itself that they hear the truth, that is, that they obey the truth and believe in the truth; with no merits whatever, beyond doubt, going before, lest grace be not grace. For if He had said, Everyone who hears My voice is of the truth, it would be thought that he is called of the truth because he obeys the truth: but He does not say this; rather He says, Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. And therefore he is not of the truth because he hears His voice; but he hears because he is of the truth, that is, because this gift has been conferred on him by the truth. And what else is this than