Tractates on the Gospel of John

1. Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, had said unto His disciples, "If ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice, because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I." And that He so spake in His servant-form, and not in that of God, wherein He is equal with the Father, is well known to faith as it resides in the minds of the pious, not as it is feigned by the scornful and senseless. And then He added, "And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe." What can He mean by this, when the fact rather is, that a man ought, before it comes to pass, to believe that which demands his belief? For it forms the very encomium of faith when that which is believed is not seen. For what greatness is there in believing what is seen, as in those words of the same Lord, when, in reproving a disciple, He said, "Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed; blessed are they that see not, and yet believe."¹ And I hardly know whether any one can be said to believe what he sees; for this same faith is thus defined in the epistle addressed to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the substance of those that hope,² the assurance³ of things not seen." Accordingly, if faith is in things that are believed, and that, too, in things which are not seen,⁴ what mean these words of the Lord, "And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe"? Ought He not rather to have said, And now I have told you before it come to pass, that ye may believe what, when it is come to pass, ye shall see? For even he who was told, "Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed," did not believe only what he saw; but he saw one thing, and believed another: for he saw Him as man, and believed Him to be God. He perceived and touched the living flesh, which he had seen in the act of dying, and he believed in the Deity infolded in that flesh. And so he believed with the mind what he did not see, by the help of that which was apparent to his bodily senses. But though we may be said to believe what we see, just as every one says that he believes his own eyes, yet that is not to be mistaken for the faith which is built up by God in our souls; but from things that are seen, we are brought to believe in those which are invisible. Wherefore, beloved, in the passage before us, when our Lord says, "And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe;" by the words, "when it is come to pass," He certainly means, that they would yet see Him after His death, alive, and ascending to His Father; at the sight of which they should then be compelled to believe that He was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God, seeing He could do such a thing, even after predicting it, and also could predict it before He did it: and this they should then believe, not with a new, but with an augmented faith; or at least [with a faith] that had been impaired⁵ by His death, and was now repaired⁶ by His resurrection. For it was not that they had not previously also believed Him to be the Son of God, but when His own predictions were actually fulfilled in Him, that faith, which was still weak at the time of His here speaking to them, and at the time of His death almost ceased to exist, sprang up again into new life and increased vigor.

2. But what says He next? "Hereafter I will not talk much with you; for the prince of this world cometh;" and who is that, but the devil? "And hath nothing in me;" that is to say, no sin at all. For by such words He points to the devil, as the prince, not of His creatures, but of sinners, whom He here designates by the name of this world. And as often as the name of the world is used in a bad sense, He is pointing only to the lovers of such a world; of whom it is elsewhere recorded, "Whosoever will be a friend of this world, becomes the enemy of God."⁷ Far be it from us, then, so to understand the devil as prince of the world, as if he wielded the government of the whole world, that is, of heaven and earth, and all that is in them; of which sort of world it was said, when we were lecturing on Christ the Word, "And the world was made by Him."⁸ The whole world therefore, from the highest heavens to the lowest earth, is subject to the Creator, not to the deserter; to the Redeemer, not to the destroyer; to the Deliverer, not to the enslaver; to the Teacher, not to the deceiver. And in what sense the devil is to be understood as the prince of the world, is still more clearly unfolded by the Apostle Paul, who, after saying, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood," that is, against men, went on to say, "but against principalities and powers, and the world-rulers of this darkness."⁹ For in the very next word he has explained what he meant by "world," when he added, "of this darkness;" so that no one, by the name of the world, should understand the whole creation, of which in no sense are fallen angels the rulers. "Of this darkness," he says, that is, of the lovers of this world: of whom, nevertheless, there were some elected, not from any deserving of their own, but by the grace of God, to whom he says, "Ye were sometimes darkness; but now are ye light in the Lord."¹⁰ For all have been under the rulers of this darkness, that is, [under the rulers] of wicked men, or darkness, as it were, in subjection to darkness: but "thanks be to God, who hath delivered us," says the same apostle, "from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love."¹¹ And in Him the prince of this world, that is, of this darkness, had nothing; for neither did He come with sin as God, nor had His flesh any hereditary taint of sin in its procreation by the Virgin. And, as if it were said to Him, Why, then, dost Thou die, if Thou hast no sin to merit the punishment of death? He immediately added, "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do: arise, let us go hence." For He was sitting at table with those who were similarly occupied. But "let us go," He said, and whither, but to the place where He, who had nothing in Him deserving of death, was to be delivered up to death? But He had the Father's commandment to die, as the very One of whom it had been foretold, "Then I paid for that which I took not away;"¹² and so appointed to pay death to the full, while owing it nothing, and to redeem us from the death that was our due. For Adam had seized on sin as a prey, when, deceived, he presumptuously stretched forth his hand to the tree, and attempted to invade the incommunicable name of that Godhead which was disallowed him, and with which the Son of God was endowed by nature, and not by robbery.

1. This passage of the Gospel, brethren, where the Lord calls Himself the vine, and His disciples the branches, declares in so many words that the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,¹³ is the head of the Church, and that we are His members. For as the vine and its branches are of one nature, therefore, His own nature as God being different from ours, He became man, that in Him human nature might be the vine, and we who also are men might become branches thereof. What mean, then, the words, "I am the true vine"? Was it to the literal vine, from which that metaphor was drawn, that He intended to point them by the addition of "true"? For it is by similitude, and not by any personal propriety, that He is thus called a vine; just as He is also termed a sheep, a lamb, a lion, a rock, a corner-stone, and other names of a like kind, which are themselves rather the true ones, from which these are drawn as similitudes, not as realities. But when He says, "I am the true vine," it is to distinguish Himself, doubtless, from that [vine] to which the words are addressed: "How art thou turned into sourness,¹⁴ as a strange vine?"¹⁵ For how could that be a true vine which was expected to bring forth grapes and brought forth thorns?¹⁶

2. "I am," He says, "the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away; and every one that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." Are, then, the husbandman and the vine one? Christ is the vine in the same sense as when He said, "The Father is greater than I;"¹⁷ but in that sense wherein He said, "I and my Father are one," He is also the husbandman. And yet not such a one as those, whose whole service is confined to external labor; but such, that He also supplies the increase from within. "For neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." But Christ is certainly God, for the Word was God; and so He and the Father are one: and if the Word was made flesh,—that which He was not before,—He nevertheless still remains what He was. And still more, after saying of the Father, as of the husbandman, that He taketh away the fruitless branches, and pruneth the fruitful, that they may bring forth more fruit, He straightway points to Himself as also the purger of the branches, when He says, "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Here, you see, He is also the pruner of the branches—a work which belongs to the husbandman, and not to the vine; and more than that, He maketh the branches His workmen. For although they give not the increase, they afford some help; but not of themselves: "For without me," He says, "ye can do nothing." And listen, also, to their own confession: "What, then, is Apollos, and what is Paul? but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted, Apollos watered." And this, too, "as the Lord gave to every man;" and so not of themselves. In that, however, which follows, "but God gave the increase,"¹⁸ He works not by them, but by Himself; for work like that exceeds the lowly capacity of man, transcends the lofty powers of angels, and rests solely and entirely in the hands of the Triune Husbandman. "Now ye are clean," that is, clean, and yet still further to be cleansed. For, had they not been clean, they could not have borne fruit; and yet every one that beareth fruit is purged by the husbandman, that he may bring forth more fruit. He bears fruit because he is clean; and to bear more, he is cleansed still further. For who in this life is so clean as not to be in need of still further and further cleansing? seeing that, "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness;" to cleanse in very deed the clean, that is, the fruitful, that they may be so much the more fruitful, as they have been made the cleaner.

3. "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Why does He not say, Ye are clean through the baptism wherewith ye have been washed, but "through the word which I have spoken unto you," save only that in the water also it is the word that cleanseth? Take away the word, and the water is neither more nor less than water. The word is added to the element, and there results the Sacrament, as if itself also a kind of visible word. For He had said also to the same effect, when washing the disciples' feet, "He that is washed needeth not, save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit."¹⁹ And whence has water so great an efficacy, as in touching the body to cleanse the soul, save by the operation of the word; and that not because it is uttered, but because it is believed? For even in the word itself the passing sound is one thing, the abiding efficacy another. "This is the word of faith which we preach," says the apostle, "that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."²⁰ Accordingly, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, "Purifying their hearts by faith;"²¹ and, says the blessed Peter in his epistle, "Even as baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer²² of a good conscience." "This is the word of faith which we preach," whereby baptism, doubtless, is also consecrated, in order to its possession of the power to cleanse. For Christ, who is the vine with us, and the husbandman with the Father, "loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." And then read the apostle, and see what he adds: "That He might sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water by the word."²³ The cleansing, therefore, would on no account be attributed to the fleeting and perishable element, were it not for that which is added, "by the word." This word of faith possesses such virtue in the Church of God, that through the medium of him who in faith presents, and blesses, and sprinkles it, He cleanseth even the tiny infant, although itself unable as yet with the heart to believe unto righteousness, and to make confession with the mouth unto salvation. All this is done by means of the word, whereof the Lord saith, "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you."